Zaffar Abbas

4 results arranged by date

Pakistan's journalists, watching the domestic stories they are covering become increasingly more dangerous, have started taking safety matters into their own hands. Zaffar Abbas, editor at the English-language daily Dawn, just forwarded to me a safety guide for journalists he has been circulating around his paper. His explanation:

Tags:

It’s not the first time the Pakistani government has tried to
restrict broadcast coverageof extremist activities—and it probably won’t
be the last. On Monday, a legislative committee forwarded a bill to the
National Assembly that would restrict
coverage “of suicide bombers, terrorists, bodies of victims of
terrorism, statements and pronouncements of militants and extremist elements
and other acts which, may, in any way, promote, aid or abet terrorists or
terrorism.”

Tags:

Three vicious bomb blasts in Pakistan in the last two days—one in Lower Dir that wounded three reporters on Thursday, and Friday’s double attack in Karachi that we’re still investigating—highlight just how dangerous it has become for journalists, particularly TV camera crews and photographers, but certainly any journalist assigned to cover a public event or military operations in the country.

Since then there hasn’t been much more news about the issue, and I thought that might be a good thing. I’m always wary when I see words like “guidelines” or “rules” or “regulations” for news coverage, terrorism-related or not. But the November announcement seemed to have broad industry support, and the guidelines were being called “voluntary”—always better than having them mandated by the government.